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In late July 1968, with work on the White Album well underway, Paul McCartney sidetracked The Beatles with the recording of what he intended to be the band’s next single. Written the previous month while driving to Surrey to visit freshly estranged Cynthia Lennon, the song was inspired by Paul’s sudden feelings of sympathy for the children of divorce, more specifically by the plight of his songwriting partner’s five-year-old son, Julian. McCartney later switched ‘Jules’ for ‘Jude’, because it "sounded a bit better”, but other than that the song arrived with all its basic elements in situ.
In the month between writing and recording, with the song in need of just a little refinement, McCartney opted to test his latest composition on anyone too polite to refuse. And that meant everyone.
The Bonzos recall Paul bashing through Hey Jude when he should have been hard at work producing I’m The Urban Spaceman. "He was just enjoying singing and playing it, like you do when you first write a song,” recalls Neil Innes. "You want to go through it in public to see if there might be something else in there. It was at that demo stage.” The Barron Knights, too, remember the Beatle interrupting their session at Abbey Road: "He said, ‘I’ve just written this song, would you like to hear it, it’s hopefully going to be our next single’,” says Pete Langford. "He actually forgot the words too.” Apple Films head Dennis O’Dell was pulled aside after a party to hear it, while Badfinger were treated to a performance just the day after they signed to Apple as The Iveys. "Paul walked over to the grand piano and said ‘Hey lads, have a listen’,” remembered bass player Ron Griffith. "He sat down and gave us a full concert rendition of Hey Jude. We were gobsmacked.”
With his ad hoc market research complete and the recording just a weekend away, McCartney spent a day polishing the song with Lennon, whose enthusiasm for the lyric far outweighed Paul’s own uncertainties. After a two-day test run at Abbey Road, The Beatles relocated to the eight-track luxury of the independent Trident Studios. With the basic rolling rhythm track nailed in just four takes, a 36-piece orchestra was ordered to flesh-out McCartney’s grand vision, the musicians not only asked to play their simple scored parts, but to down instruments and contribute to the singalong extended coda - clapping too, if they would be so kind. For a double fee all but one happily obliged.